Jean Cocteau's Orpheus, Part I

Orpheus is on trial.

“In what form?” some may ask. Through that masterful technique of terror perfected in the twentieth century that negates the possibility for transcendence, and the spiritual freedom of those who seek it.

Orpheus is taken before a tribunal that accuses him of two crimes: innocence, which essentially has to do with “being capable and culpable of all crimes rather than one in particular”; and “repeatedly attempting to trespass in another world.”

Jean Cocteau, the artist and poet, pleads guilty to both crimes. He adds: “I am besieged by crimes I have not committed and have often been tempted to scale that mysterious fourth wall on which men inscribe their loves and their dreams.”
This fourth wall is no doubt an allusion to the fourth dimension, or what has to do with the nature of time itself.

“But why is this? The two members of the tribunal ask. They beg the question.
He answers: “World weary, perhaps, and a hatred of habit. Defiance of the rules…that creativity which is the highest form of humanity’s spirit of contradiction.”

That part of the film is Cocteau’s autobiographical settling of the score with his critics, as it were.

The tribunal then asks: “What then do you mean by film?”
“A film,” he answers, “is a petrifying fountain of thought. A film reviews lifeless deeds. A film permits one to give the appearance of reality to that which is unreal.”
They then continue their analytical assault by asking him, “What do you mean by unreal?”

He answers: “That which lies beyond our meager limits.”
Of course, the tribunal operates as a form of chastisement and not as a sincere appeal to truth.